The moon is up. He must come.

Pale light transforms the shadows beyond Rosalind’s greenhouse into woodland and overlays her serious face on the glass. She has already tugged out the combs and pins that cage her hair. She has thrown off her clothes – the daring, above-the-ankle skirt, the ordinary box-pleated blouse, corset, drawers and sturdy shoes – and donned a paisley dressing gown, the silk cool against her hot skin.

He likes to undress her before having her on the daybed in the corner, but she does not want that slow tease tonight. The muscles between her legs beg for him. Their ache drove her wild today. She dug the kitchen garden like a demon. The men, used to ignoring Lord Coxley’s strange spinster daughter, had stared. She had imagined tossing her spade aside and lifting her skirt to reveal her drawers. She had pictured herself stretching the open-crotch seam wide to reveal the V of her hair.

Is this what you can smell, boys?

She scoops compost into a small terracotta pot from a tin bucket on the table, then makes a hole with her index finger.

Will he come tonight? Does he still want me?

Movement among the trees. A detaching shadow.

Rosalind ducks her head over a wooden tray of cosmos seedlings, snatches up a pencil and uses it to lift out a plant. She places the seedling in the pot and pats the compost down around it.

Next.

The old piano stool swivels as she works mechanically: fill a pot, make a hole, prick out, add seedling, press down. Breathe, Rosalind. She squeezes her thighs together and the ache draws out, worsens.

The thud of her heart fills her head, yet she hears the hinges of the iron door creak. At the pad of his feet, her chest swells. She knows he is naked. He is always naked.

Next pot. Stay on task.

The steady rhythm of his feet causes her to imagine it swinging, side to side. Or perhaps it is already risen and engorged. And then he is there, hugging her waist, all muscular warmth, leaning in over her shoulder like a regular man would. Laughing hazel eyes, full lips, tawny hair. He smells of fresh wood shavings like he is newly hewn each time he comes to her.

His smile is knowing. ‘Can’t wait, my Lady Rose?’

Am I too obvious? Her blue blood rebels. ‘Oh hello. Wait, please. I must finish this tray.’

‘Carry on,’ he whispers. ‘I will watch.’

The playfulness in his voice prickles her skin. Steadying her hands, she fills one pot after another, aware of his chest pressing against her straight spine, of his bare thighs straddling her stool and, after a few moments, of a strong nudge against the small of her back.

She uses an earthenware jug to water her pots, and the splash reminds her of the moistness between her legs. Why has she stupidly locked herself into this task?

When she fills the next pot too quickly, he says, ‘Careful. You’re spilling compost.’

Compost and soil are precious to him.

She discovered his fixation during their first meeting, alone in the kitchen garden. He had worn a cotton shirt, moleskin trousers and work boots, so she had assumed he was a new hire, until the dirt on her palm caught his eye. He had taken her hand, cupped it to his mouth, and licked it clean, his tongue rough as bark. Its abrasiveness drove her dizzy.

‘Your name, sir?’

‘Orlando.’

A character from her favourite Shakespeare play, As You Like It, who falls in love with a Rosalind. A lie, obviously – but she’d been too swept up to care.

As Rosalind pricks out plant after plant, fills hole after hole, he licks his lips. [AS12] His hands slip from her waist. Trail down her thighs to her knees. Another pot, and his fingers ruche up the silk of her dressing gown[AS13] , raising the curtain until his fingertips brush her skin. Next pot, his hands skim up her thighs towards home. Yes, yes!

Casually, she spreads her legs – and his fingers coast right past her ache to toy with the coarse hair above it. It is delightful, but she wants to scream.

‘Orlando, please.’

He presses himself harder against her back. ‘Prick out another.’

She scoops compost into a pot, inserts her finger to create a depression and—

He eases her open. His two index fingers slip inside.

Oh, oh! Her legs tremble.

She plunges her finger down to the hole in the pot’s base, and he delves deeper. She circles her finger, slowly churning the decomposed matter, and his fingers sweep in half circles, parting and meeting, making her walls throb. She retracts her finger from the pot, then jabs it back down into the hole. His fingers retreat then push against her clenched muscles.

‘So tight, Rose. Too long without me.’

Simply ‘Rose’ now. Yes.

‘A cloudy fortnight,’ she pants out, as his fingers dip again.

She loves his fingers. He withdraws them much too soon. When she tries to snatch them back, he swivels the piano stool round, and there he is, standing before her in all his naked glory. His chest hair arrows down towards his erection. He kneels  before her, licks her pot-soiled hand clean then guides it towards her ache.

‘Do as I did, Rose.’

‘I am not certain I ought—’

‘Trust me. I know what you like.’

She purses her lips. ‘How do you know?’

Instead of answering, he lays a sticky index finger along the length of hers, and points the way in. Their fingers enter together. She gasps, expecting it to feel wrong to touch herself like this, but it does not.

He removes his finger – another lick – and then he grasps his erection and begins to work his hand up and down it. Rosalind is scandalised that he handles himself so, but she is entranced too as his eyelids flutter, and – oh! – her own hand is moving. Her fingers explore the shape of her secret interior. And every touch is a delight, slow at first, then quicker, keeping time with the motion of his clenched hand.

If someone were to pass by the greenhouse now! The idea of it thrills her.

She pitches her pelvis higher. The moment she tips her head back and looks up through the glass roof at the crescent moon, his breath touches her swelling. He is breathing her in, and then his soft mouth, his rough tongue, are there. She watches his head bob. Her wet fingers find his face, and then her ecstasy comes.

It starts near her tailbone and sweeps forward. Wave upon wave of utter bliss. She is too choked to cry out. His tongue laps and laps. She strokes his swallowing throat. Eventually, when he stands, his voice is raw.

‘My root needs its beautiful hole.’

‘Come here then,’ she rasps. ‘Let me be your pot.’

She undoes the tie of her dressing gown and lets the silk fall to the flagstones. The cool air and his heated gaze make her shiver. She shifts her bottom forward to the stool’s edge, then leans back, her elbows on the table. She points her breasts towards the night sky. 

His erection glistens. He widens her legs, steps between them, and drives his enormous root home. Her wet walls stretch and swallow him until their pelvises kiss.

He glides back, then thrusts. The stool jolts, the pots rattle, the seedlings quiver. She whimpers, for he is butting hard against a sweet spot, hidden deep inside her until now. She wants to cry out his name, but the name is wrong. He is not an ‘Orlando’, just as she is no lady.

The bucket is close by. She reaches across her chest to fist compost. She grimes her heavy breasts, her stiff nipples. Her hand lingers. Squeezes her sensitive flesh.

His eyes are closed. He is panting, consumed wholly in the act of planting himself as deep as he can go. A new tingle starts near her tailbone. Again – yes!

She cries out a better name for him. ‘Forest!’

His eyes snap open. There is something ancient and unknown in their hazel depths, but she wants to know it, know everything. She wants to know all of him, not just as a man, but as the creature he really is.

‘Beloved Forest,’ she says. ‘Eat.’

Forest beholds her soiled chest and presses his parted lips to a breast. Oh, his fiery mouth! Oh, his abrasive tongue! His thrusts quicken, sharpen. The table jerks. Pots topple. His dirt-caked lips suck her nipple to a razor point. Rosalind moans, digs a hand into his scalp and arches. 

A hot gush explodes against her triumphant walls.

‘ROSE!’ His cry shakes the greenhouse glass.

The soft tufts of his hair change between her fingers.

They become green leaves.

And her bliss roars.